


The Proper Choice

by hellscabanaboy



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Addiction, Gen, Missing Scene, Other, Service, UST, hints of D/s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:24:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellscabanaboy/pseuds/hellscabanaboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seivarden hardly knows who she is anymore. She's not the person Breq wishes she was, that much is sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Proper Choice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kutsushita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kutsushita/gifts).



If I’d still had the kef, I’d hardly even have noticed what people thought of me. Let alone cared. Just like before, as it should have been.

Instead I have the tiny cabin that the captain has assigned us - assigned _Breq_ \- small enough that it doesn’t even have an alcove for the servant’s bunk, just a little cot set up in the corner, and the worst part is when I feel my face flush with indignation I don’t know whether it’s on my behalf or on Breq’s. I have the cheap glass of the tea set cool against my bare skin, the grinding of my teeth drowning out the sound of the water starting to simmer, the dry rasp of recycled air that had never once bothered me in thirty years on a spaceship, before. The silent echo of Breq’s voice, “My servant, Seivarden Vendaai.”

I can feel her eyes boring into me as I work. Have all day, although when I look at her she contrives to be glancing at a tablet, or stowing her fortunately few belongings in the single drawer and cabinet the room provided. (The money, she stores— I need to use the head, I realize when she gets to the money). She’s waiting. Waiting for me to fail, for me to prove it would have been just to leave me to die. If it had been anyone else - anyone else alive, now - it wouldn’t even have been worth trying to prove wrong. But Breq is—

The steam from the boiling water starts to cling painfully to my hand.

I haven’t gotten the cups ready, or the trays, or even chosen which of the teas I was going to use.. I didn’t think of it. So I listen to the water start to boil down and scowl down at the canisters of tea. There aren’t even any words I can read on the packaging, and even if I could tell them apart by taste - it all just tastes bizarre to me, like someone who’s never had tea in their lives tried to recreate it - I wouldn’t know which one was which. There’s more gone from the first one I pick up, with the label showing a pale weedy-looking girl holding a sheaf of some kind of plant, so that must be the one Breq prefers. I could give her that, and use the other for myself, since I wouldn’t get any decent tea either way. Unless she prefers the other, and she’s drinking this first to have more left for the rest of the journey. If she would stop watching me, and the water would stop boiling, and I had a minute to fucking think—

Well, I still wouldn’t know, obviously. I wasn’t meant for this sort of thing.

Breq doesn’t look up from her reading as I approach. Set the tray down on the little shelf by the bed, too narrow to really hold it, steady it with one hand. I wonder what she’s looking at. If it’s business from the Radch, that she’s well placed enough to be privy to, that I never will be again. I wouldn’t have cared about that either, on the kef, wouldn’t have even cared that it was probably just and proper for it to be that way. Now that I’m thinking clear it’s abhorrent, to think of not caring about a thing like that. Almost enough so that I don’t miss it.

“Thank you,” she murmurs when I set the bowl into her outstretched hand, her eyes still flicking across the screen. The sort of empty nicety one says to a clerk, just words to fill space in the air. Nothing about me.

My chest tightens anyway, and not just with indignation, either. If she hadn’t found me, if she hadn’t dragged me out of the snow, if she hadn’t jumped off a bridge for me, I’d never have had to feel something like that.

When I get back to my tea, I find the nasty stuff has steeped for far too long.

***

The ship we’ve booked passage on is actually a cargo ship running out of Luvach, an even smaller and more backwater place than Nilt had been. Apparently there’s a fruit they grow - on their southernmost continent, Breq says - that’s popular around the planets in this region, so there are always small cargo runs leaving to supply fresh product. And since there’s hardly any other reason for interplanetary travel around here - at least so far as I can tell - the cargo ships tend to also leave room to take on a few passengers, at least as far as Kiangzin Station, where you can get a real passenger flight headed towards civilization.

The people of Luvach - at least the ones crewing this ship, Breq says, we can’t tell what others there are - are almost as pale as the Nilters, but not so squat and fat. Instead they’re tall and muscular, and move in their uniforms like they find even the loose khaki constraining. Because it’s hot on the south continent, apparently, so they don’t wear jackets or anything even with their uniforms - I did ask her to tell me about these people, I don’t just sit around and let her lecture me about provincials. Well, I probably would, if she were interested. She seems to know all about these people, or whatever people we encounter, so it must be important, somehow.

They’re a communal-minded people, she tells me. Children belong to the community, whatever _that_ means, and even ventures that aren’t truly owned in common tend to give and expect aid from those around them. Where this affects us - which I asked, because I hadn’t really needed to know this much, although she mostly goes quiet after that and it’s not like I would have _minded_ hearing more, really - is that mealtimes and dishes are shared, even for the passengers when aboardship. It would have been rude on their part to do otherwise. Which isn’t a problem, in itself - I’d served on ships all my life, before, taken all my meals in the officers’ mess - but well, those had been Radchaai. _I_ had been Radchaai, not just some stranger that’d washed up among these people.

“Honored.” One of them rises as we walk in the door, ushers Breq to a seat. Nobody even looks at me - which, somehow, feels more like everyone’s looking at me - so I just kind of slink in after her, slouch down at the table. Everyone’s got a plate of some kind of flatbread in front of them, and there’s a big pot of some stew-looking thing in the middle, maybe fruit-based from the bright color. And the ship’s officers are all smiling, chatting with a couple of people out of uniform who I assume are other passengers. I can only understand what about half of them are saying. It’s like I’m not even there.

I don’t know what I’d expected. That I was supposed to get Breq’s food, or something - which would have been humiliating enough. But I don’t even know what to say to these people - back in the Radch, or at least back before they’d spit me out of the pod, I’d never have had to talk to them at all. And worse, I still don’t have to. I don’t even matter that much.

That’s what makes me angriest of all. That I would even care what these people think of me. They’re nothing, they always will be. I shouldn’t need the Radch or the kef to remember that.

The one who’d gotten up - I’m assuming she’s the captain, though none of them seem to wear anything in the way of insignia, or any other status markers, at that - takes one of the pieces of bread and breaks it in two. Murmurs a few harsh words over it in her own language, like the hissing of a snake, and abandons it to its own little plate. An offering, then - I know some people in the provinces make them with food like this. Then she takes her own bread and dips it in the pot, eats it right out of her hand without hesitation, and as soon as she’s seated again all the rest of them start to follow suit.

I glance over at Breq, expecting her to say something, but she’s already rising to do the same, scooping some sort of stew onto her bread and bringing it to her lips in the same motion. I flush, angry and strangely embarrassed - though it’s distasteful enough that it’s not that strange, really. In the Radch - in civilization - you’d never see people eating with their hands, not even tiny children. Maybe something like the bread, that you could hold in gloved fingers without making a mess. Even the lowest of lowborns, people who hadn’t been part of the Radch for more than a generation, would have learned to balk at eating something like this.

There’s not any utensils, either. I hunch in my chair, munch determinedly on the bread. I’ve been away from civilization for years, it’s not like I haven’t seen people eating with their hands before. They’ve just never expected me to do it. To be grateful.

“Have you had a chance to try leesh before, Honored?” asks the captain, gesturing at the dish. “It’s not much, but to us it’s a pleasure.

“Never,” says Breq politely, taking another piece, and some of the other passengers start to chime in, sharing their thoughts on the dish. Breq’s been outside the Radch for years too, she’s probably used to this. Must be, to not even balk at joining in herself. It doesn’t even matter how tidy they might have been about it - sharing food between hands would have been a terribly private thing to do even among lovers. And she sucks a stray drop right from her finger, elegant lips dispassionate as she reaches for another piece—

“I need something else,” I say, pushing the bread away from me. “Bring me something else.”

They look at me like I’ve grown an extra head. Except Breq, who just looks tired. Fuck.

“There is nothing else, Radchaai,” says the one seated closest to the kitchen, who I assume must be the cook. Who I assume must be able to find me something, if she’d bothered. “Food is food. Eat it or don’t.”

“I _can’t_ ,” I say, barely short of a whine, but she just goes back to her meal, and Breq’s lips thin in the way they do when she thinks she isn’t showing anger. I shouldn’t have said anything, probably, even though it’s outrageous. It wasn’t like they were going to do anything differently. I’m just a servant, here, not even a real passenger. And I almost wonder if they even realize what the problem is, as unimaginable as it seems that they could miss it.

I guess if I just eat it now and keep quiet, everyone will just pretend I didn’t say anything. Assume I’d been whining for its own sake, rather than truly affronted. Even Breq would probably forget about it, it’s not like she hasn’t seen me do worse. Just sit here and let these people assume I’m some kind of unstable. If they even think of me at all.

I shove my chair back as I stand up. Don’t look at anyone on the way out of the room, not even Breq.

It takes me a couple tries to find my way back later, in between the crew’s mealtimes. There’s still the dregs of the stew left out, and most of a plate of bread, already starting to go hard in the open air. It’s not any less unclean than it had been, but at least there’s no one here now to watch me eat. And when I go through the drawer I find a mostly-dull knife I can use to spear the bread, so it’s not too distasteful on my part.

The next day, Breq offers to bring me to lunch with her, calm but sharp-eyed. I stare at the wall, and don’t answer.

***

It’s especially bad in the mornings. Well, it’s bad in the evenings, too, when I’m too tired to deal with one more thing that’s not where it’s meant to be. And in the middle of the afternoons, when the hours slide into a blur of tedium while I count every minute that passes by. But it’s not good in the mornings. It’s the light too bright through my lashes even in the dingy cabin, it’s realizing how much of my body has to move even just to breathe. It’s the papery pillow of the cot pressing into my face and forcing me to remember that I’m nowhere other than here.

This time I wake up to Breq singing.

It’s not bad, at first, even in that voice. The song is slow, mournful or maybe just peaceful, filters gradually into my thoughts like the words could wrap around me and hold me steady. Words I don’t know, in yet another language I’ve never heard before - how many does she even know, anyway? It had used to be the Radch that held me, the work of annexations proceeding on just as it always had and always would, with exactly the place for me within it.. The Radch, and Vendaai, and well, I had already been steady then, hadn’t I? I hadn’t needed anything else - certainly not nonsense words from someone who hated me.

It can’t really hold me like that, after all, if I can’t even tell what she’s saying.

I won’t say anything. It’s Breq’s cabin, isn’t it, not mine. She can sing if she wants to.

It’s just words, anyway. Meaningless words, from meaningless people. If it meant anything, they would have said it in Radchaai, wouldn’t they? It’s definitely not the language of the ship’s people, from Luvach - it might have been another one I haven’t heard her sing before, this one full of soft sibilants that lend the song kind of an eerie quality. It makes me think of that icon she has, with the head, and the one of Amaat that goes with it. How that thing surely doesn’t belong with Amaat’s icon - the imagery isn’t right, it’s hardly even religious at all - and yet it’s the one I end up looking at every time she has it out, as though it had any kind of power. I’ve never had any kind of superstitions, just gave due credence to the omens and went on with my life - but it’s eerie enough to make me shiver.

I can’t deal with it anymore. Thrash over on my cot, don’t stop to think. “Can’t you sing something civilized?”

Breq gives me a look like she’s just found an insect floating in her tea, and I immediately regret saying it. I mean, it’s not like it had been that bad. Just a little much, is all. I could have just put up with it.

There’s silence for a long moment, during which I wish the thin tacky blanket would just rise up and swallow me, and then without a word, she starts singing again. Not just in Radchaai - her accent, which is normally as broad and slurred as everyone’s these days, is suddenly elevated, pronouncing every word just as I remembered it from my youth. For just a second, my whole body floods with relief at the familiarity. But of course, she won’t be doing it for my benefit.

“I tremble - my unsteady hand  
Unsteady mind reveals so clear  
That I had scorned the greater life  
And left myself in doubt, in shame.

She marches proper home from war  
The jewels she’s won upon her breast  
And yet the gleam that seizes me  
I know has shined for her since birth…”

I’d never been much of a follower of the arts. I’m - I was a daughter of the military, had known I was meant to be since long before I took the aptitudes. But any child knows the operas of Kienet, at least one with any breeding. Is this _Ravka_ , then - no, wait, it must be _She Who Remains_ , where the daughter of a stagnant house sings her remorse for rejecting the patronage of a young lieutenant once she’s come home a hero of the Radch. Of course she spends the rest of the play living a life of virtuous penance before her erstwhile suitor turns to her again - I think that was the one where she ended up traveling to the outskirts of the Radch, to bring civilization to even the lowest citizens. I’d always thought it was kind of overblown, but then these things tended to be.

I’ve never heard her sing in Radchaai before, I realize. Always something foreign, I don’t even know how many. I guess I’d just assumed it was because she was low-bred.

“…and even so I know my fault  
The full injustice of my scorn  
Behind me then fell proper deeds  
And all I long for in their wake…”

I stare straight forward where I lie, even once she finishes and falls into silence. Somehow I don’t want to move, even just to roll over. I’m afraid my hands will shake if I try to use them. Or that she’ll notice, and really look at me, this time.

“Darirr was annexed a century and a half ago,” Breq says at long last, naming a place I’ve never heard of that sounds in line with the gliding rhythm of her first song. “In that time, I understand, the musical drama performed on their main subcontinent has become quite popular in the major cities of Outradch. Translated into Radchaai, of course. But since I spent some time on Darirr itself - and considerably less in Outradch, as I’m sure you’re aware - the native version is more familiar to me.” Another long pause. “But of course, before then the song was uncivilized. Certainly you’d prefer something you know.”

I don’t hear her moving around anymore, so she must be waiting for an answer. She’s angry, probably. Well, I guess I would be too if someone was barking orders at me in my own room. Besides her, of course. And insulting her music, too, though I get the sense that the insult goes deeper than that.

“I didn’t realize,” I say, quieter than I meant. “I couldn’t have realized.”

“No,” she replies. “I suppose you couldn’t.”

Because of the stasis, I had meant. Because I hardly know the language from the past century, let alone the popular music. I don’t think she meant the same thing.

 _It’s okay if you keep singing_ , I start to say. But that just sounds like another order dressed up to look nice. Or I kind of liked it, really, but that just sounds patronizing, and maybe like I had just changed my mind when she had told me it was Radchaai - which I had, to be fair, like most people would, but Breq wouldn’t want to hear that. Breq would be hoping, maybe against her better judgment, that I’d be better than that. 

I have to say something, though. Or else I’ll be stuck like this, probably won’t even manage to get out of bed, and she’ll be angry about that too and I’ll hear the condemnation every time I hear her move and I don’t even know how I’ll get through the day like that, let alone the rest of the journey, trapped in here being despised by the only person in the world who knows I exist. I’m so tired of caring what she thinks about me. I never would have, before. I wish I would stop.

“Everything’s different now,” I try. “Everything keeps changing. If it would just be like normal, I’d be better at all of this.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she declares. “If nothing had ever changed, you’d never have even thought of doing it differently.”

And then she’d have thought even worse of me, clearly. If she had been there then, which she hadn’t. No one here had.

She must at least think I’m better than I could have been, then. She must at least think I’m trying.

I haul myself upright at last, swing my legs over the edge of the cot and watch to make sure they don’t shake. Try vainly to pat my hair back into place, and that’s when I notice Breq’s watching me - just out of the corner of her eye, but she’s also not really doing anything else, so maybe she was paying attention after all. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about it. She doesn’t seem like the type to concern herself with me while I fuck everything up. But she had brought me along, and there’d never been much chance that I _wouldn’t_ fuck everything up, so there’s that.

I only turn away long enough to change into a fresh shirt, and splash some water on my face from the little basin in the corner. Start the water for tea, almost automatically, and she glances up at me the whole way like she’s surprised to see me doing it.

She’s never actually asked me to make her tea. Or any of the other chores I’ve taken to doing. I’ve always just done it, without being told. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that, but it’s the first time I’ve thought to wonder if that’s really the same.

The motions of the tea service come almost as naturally now as if I really had been born for it. Heat the pot first with a splash of water, sprinkle the leaves inside. Heat the bowls, too, with the bit of water that’s left over. I’ve found the Nilters’ bizarre tea tastes better once it’s been strained a couple times - at least, the feel in the mouth is closer to real tea, even if the taste is still off. So I make sure to do that each time, and get Breq’s bowl ready on a tray along with the pot as I wait for it to finish steeping.

Breq looks up at me as I set the tray down beside her. Unsmiling, but not angry. Not unkind. Only my hands shake, and the flask clattering against the bowl when I pour seems deafening in the tiny cabin. Fuck, I just wish I could say _something_ that wouldn’t keep making it worse. Or at least to tell her all the stuff that was mixed around in my head - assuming I could really figure it out myself - even if there was no reason she should be sympathetic or anything.

“I am trying,” I say, and then realize it doesn’t cover my self-consciousness one bit. “I am. I just never know how it works. I’m never sure.”

“No one’s sure,” she says, in a voice like a sigh. I pick up her bowl, glad that I’ve gotten used to the steaming heat, offer it to her in both hands. “We don’t all take it out on the people around us.”

I duck my head in acknowledgment, since there’s really no answer I can give.

It’s not like I can blame her for being mad at me, not at all. Or for not expecting any better from me - I don’t really either, to be honest. Don’t even know what better is, anymore, which is part of the problem. I’m just so tired of thinking about it. So tired of wondering, every time I think of something, what it would make her think of me, and always coming up the worse in my answer.

My hands brush hers as I hand her the bowl. Her fingers hotter than mine even after I’ve been holding it. Thicker and stronger, too, with neat tiny fingernails she keeps cut to the quick. Amaat’s mercy, I thought I was used to going bare-handed.

I thought I was used to being around her.

I can’t tell if she’s even noticed. She must have spent a long time out of the Radch, to be so unconcerned about the touch of skin on skin. Or maybe she’s just above getting lost in that sort of thing. The way I’m not, never should have thought that I was. I’d tried not to think about it with her, tried to put it to the back of my mind even if I had. I’d even thought it was working, which seems pretty pitiful, now.

She raises the cup to her lips, takes a long swallow. Fuck. Her lips. I shut my eyes, so I can’t stare, and even the feel of my lashes against my cheeks makes me feel more sensitive, more aware of every little thing. It would have been maddening even if I didn’t have the kef to compare it to.

I wish I had it now. Or I wish I could touch her again, even just her fingertips.

“Sit down,” she says, and I hit the little chair so hard the flimsy thing wobbles under my weight. Can’t help thinking what else I would have done, if she said. “Drink.”

I manage to pick up my tea bowl, clumsily slosh the tea in and drink deep. It doesn’t even taste too bad.

“It’s over five months before we reach Radchaai space,” she says. Not happy, but the anger is modulated now. Maybe by pity, which is humiliating, but I don’t really expect more from her. I don’t deserve it. “There’s no reason anything would change before then, not for us at least. And that should be time enough for you to learn. To choose what you want to do next.”

I nod. Leave my head bowed. If pity is what she’s willing to offer me, then I’m glad to take it.

“No one’s sure,” she says again, quiet as though she were talking to herself. “You just keep moving forward. That’s all.”

***

I don’t know how to braid my own hair.

I probably should have realized that before now, really. When I’d been a ship’s captain I’d kept it in dozens of tiny braids cascading down my shoulders, had one of my ancillaries do them up for me, or a servant when I was on leave. It was a common enough style, both of my mothers had done it for much of their lives, and it hadn’t seemed to have gone totally out of style, even now. Though I’d mostly seen it on people who’d been important - which is who I’d seen it on before, of course, it’s just that back then that had been everyone I’d known. It hadn’t seemed worth it to do it myself, once I’d had to take them out, and I hadn’t had the money to pay for it done - or, well, if I ever did, it hadn’t gone to that.

I’d been a mess then, though. For all that time, even the times I’d thought I was getting better - I didn’t really have anything to get better for, I’d just been one more nobody, only even the other nobodies hadn’t had any reason to bother with me. This time is different. This time I want to be better.

I just can’t fucking do it.

My braids, I mean. They’re too tiny, and I can’t see them even in a mirror when they’re on the back of my own head, and even if I manage to get one done then it’s just in the way when I do the others. And my arms are tired, and I want to get to the ironing, which always takes forever to get just right, but Breq’s been at the ship’s gym for more than three hours by now and at least the ironing I can do when she’s here. Which I obviously can’t with this; it would be an embarrassment even if I weren’t fucking it up so badly.

Amaat’s grace, what if she thought I was doing it for her? To get her to look at me, I mean. Not that she would think that, I’m still not sure she even thinks about that kind of thing - can’t really imagine it, to be honest. And I wouldn’t do it, either - I mean, obviously I would in an instant if she asked, but that’s the point, isn’t it. She’s not going to ask. Hell, she doesn’t even ask me for a bowl of tea. Even I wouldn’t do something as pathetic as trying to get her interest that way.

It’s not like I don’t think about it. But well, I try not to. It doesn’t feel right wanting that kind of thing, or even thinking I might want it, when I’m as good as sure she’s not interested. And when I think about it that way I really don’t want it, at all, not unless it’s something I can do for her - as much as that sounds unbelievable. Because apparently I do want it, or I’d just drop the whole thing.

There’s nothing I can count on to make me do that, not anymore.

I heave a deep sigh, look back up at my reflection in the tiny mirror above the sink. My hair’s started to puff out around my face, with all I’ve been messing with it. I run some water on my hands and try to pat it back down, but it really is getting too long to just let sit loose anymore. I’d have been embarrassed about it long before now, back then.

It’s fine if I just serve her, right? She’s already as much as said that’s okay. And surely if I were overstepping she’d have said something by now, she’s not shy about that kind of thing. So I just need to see to her benefit, and everything that comes with that will follow. It will have been just and proper of her to pick me up, to keep me with her.

And this way, I get to stay with her. And maybe figure out how to be better than I’ve been all this time, even if she never even looks at me again.

The next day, I find one of the crew members whose head is always shaved down to the roots. I don’t have anything to pay her for her equipment or her services, but it turns out these people like to do their own ironing even less than most of us, I guess since they’re so unused to having to do it. It takes me at least three or four times longer to fulfill my end of the deal then it takes her to get done with my hair, but I do it feeling even lighter than should have been expected, humming a tune I can’t quite place.

***

I run into the same crew member at the gym the next day. Not surprising, really, on a ship as small as this one, although I do try to go at times when I’ll be alone. It’s somehow seems embarrassing to have people around to look at me running in place on the machine, even though everyone does it, in space.

“Seivarden,” she says to me, traces of a smile playing at her lips, which is the surprising part. Her accent renders it, “S’vardn,” the sounds crushing together as though she can’t wait to get them out of her mouth, and my upper lip would have curled back in disgust except that I’d already started thinking, as soon as I saw her coming up to me, about how I need to not fuck this up.

“Evening, Lieutenant.” I should have tried to remember her name. Back home, among citizens, that would have been second nature when asking a favor. And Breq would say there’s no difference, or not the kind of difference that matters; that much I know she would.

She snorts amusedly. “Navigator. We have titles, not ranks, Radchaai.” She waits a moment, smiles indulgently. “I’m Navigator Styld.”

I lean back in my seat, take a deep breath. I’m the one who’d wronged her by not paying attention, or that’s what Breq would have said, I’m pretty sure. “Styld, then. Thanks for your help the other day.”

“It was nothing. That mess didn’t suit you in any case.” You’ve never seen what does suit me, I want to say. Or at least what had suited me, once. Instead I keep quiet, hope I’m still smiling. “You still don’t come to dinner.”

“Um.” I never have been back after that first time. Probably it had been all the worse for being a surprise, but I still didn’t really want to do it again. And, well, I had already insulted them by flouncing off, I can only imagine, they probably don’t want me coming back any more than I do. Even if I had wanted to, it probably would have been just trying to make myself feel better about it, or something. And there’s only a little over a week to Kiangzin Station, either way. “I just got used to doing it that way, I guess.”

“We all thought it was because you were deficient in some way,” says Styld, like it was just normal conversation. It would have been slander, if I had still been an officer of the Radch. “But I’ve spoken with you. That’s not your problem. And I know the Honored has no objections to your coming. So why would you hide away?”

There are a dozen answers to that question, none of which I have any intention of telling her. Or anyone, really.

But she had asked.

“Like I said,” I reply. “I got used to it. Maybe I’ll try coming back sometime. If that’s what you want.”

“That’s why we have the meals,” she says, making a wry face that I’m tempted to think is wondering if I’m not deficient after all. Instead I just try not to think about it. I don’t need to care what these people think of me. I don’t.

“Thanks,” I say, starting up the machine again. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

***

Breq would think it’s right of me to go.

That’s probably because it is, of course. She’d want me to talk to these people like they were civilized - like they were my equals. To talk to everyone that way, I think. And I’ve already accepted that she knows these things better than I do. I don’t mind following her on them, either, when it comes to that.

I sort of think she’d mind, though. She’d want me to do it because I think it’s right.

And I don’t, not really. These people aren’t even civilized. It’s beyond a question of good upbringing or no, they’re barely even people the way she and I are. And she’d know. She’s got no illusions about what I think about this sort of thing. She wouldn’t think any better of me for just going along for the sake of what other people think of me. She’d just wonder what I’m really thinking - no, she wouldn’t have to wonder. She knows what I’m like, and that’s not going to change.

I lie back on my cot, think about just going back to sleep. Then I won’t have to think about it, and maybe I can just keep doing it until we reach Kiangzin Station and this whole thing is done with. But it won’t really be like stopping. It’ll still be there in the back of my mind, and there’s no way to get rid of it anymore. Not without making everything even worse.

If it’s supposed to be the right thing to do, it must be better to do it than not. Even if I’ll still be in the wrong, either way.

I roll over, tell the ship's computer to find me a recording of _She Who Remains_. It had been a long time since I'd heard it, anyway - well, after a thousand years, it would have to be. It takes what seems absurdly long to sort through to find one, though I guess I've got to be grateful they even have old Radchaai operas at all, out here.

I listen until it's time for dinner, and forget to think about anything else at all.

***

Breq’s already stopped asking me to come to dinner with her - I think everyone had just started to accept that I’d slink into the mess and take bits of whatever was left. Which is pretty embarrassing on its own, now that I think about it. Much more embarrassing than eating dinner with a bunch of provincials. But it does mean that even she looks at me like I’m doing something freakish when I walk in the door.

Navigator Styld doesn’t, though. Which isn’t the same, obviously, not at all. But it’s better than nothing, anyway.

I slump into the seat next to Breq, drag one of the plates over towards me, and the conversation gradually filters back up around me. Or not all the way back, I think. They’re still quiet, and every so often I see someone glance at me from the corner of their eye, like they’re trying not to stare openly. Well, I’d invited that much, I guess.

I nibble on the bread, held in my fingertips, which isn’t more than any Radchaai would do. I’m going to have to try the food, probably, or it’ll just be the same as I’d been doing the whole time but more publicly, so probably even ruder. Maybe I can wait until people are getting done, though. Or until they’re distracted, so they’re not looking at me, which is kind of the worst part, now that I think about it. Even though these people don’t even think there’s anything untoward about it, somehow. Even though they don’t have any right to judge me, which I’ve known and told myself this whole time, and still I keep feeling sick when I think about it.

“S’vardn,” Styld says finally, when the conversation’s started to trickle down again. “What about you? How did you come to serve the Honored Breq?”

Ordinarily I’d be grateful for the attempt at conversation. I can’t quite get myself to make any, there’s too much going on in my head, I wish it would just stop - but answering questions about my past is awkward, too. I don’t even have the presence of mind to make something up that makes sense. I jam the rest of the piece of bread in my mouth, chew it slowly before I answer. “Uh…I lost my identification while I was traveling. So I took service with Breq until I could return to the Radch.

“Well, how did you meet, then?”

“Just about as you’d expect,” says Breq with one of her half-smiles. “He’d come on hard times. I picked him up.”

Right, these people would call me something different. Maybe that’s why they look at me so strangely when I talk, sometimes; surely some of them must be, also, in their own language, not that I would be able to tell which ones if I’d tried. It’s hard enough to tell them apart sometimes in ways I do understand.

“He was a good deal more obnoxious then, though,” Breq continues. “If you’ll believe it.”

I glare at her, and Styld starts out laughing, then the captain, and chuckles ring from around the table. More at my face than what Breq said, I think, which is doubly infuriating, because there’s no way to get them to leave off mocking me once it’s self-perpetuating. I want to storm off again. Better than sitting here, acting like these people have a right to make fun of me. Trying to be polite about it, when I never should have had to concern myself with them at all.

If I still had the kef, I’d never have noticed. I’d never have cared.

I manage a short laugh, dip my bread in the soup while everyone’s busy, while at least no one else has got their hands in there. Breq glances at me as I eat, and I’m just grateful that my skin doesn’t show a flush - fuck, she’s been eating from it, too, it’s practically like she had given me the food from her hands, except not like that at all, and I’d even rather keep the dinner conversation going than think about _that_ anymore.

But her lips turn up at the corners, in just a little bit of a smile. And I realize that I’m returning it, so wide it tugs at the corners of my mouth.

The stew isn’t bad, either - it’s better hot. But I could look at her smile forever, no matter what else is going on around me. Could put up with much worse than this, if I could just make it keep happening.

“And yet,” says Styld, thankfully more to the table in general than to Breq. “Don’t you think he does even better with this hair gone?”

***

When we hit Kiangzin station, Breq gets us a room - a real one, this time, with a standing panel half blocking off my cot - and heads straight back out, leaving everything but what she always has on her person in a pile by the door.

“I need to run a couple of errands before we make the next ship out,” she says, handing me a slim wallet. “But this should be enough for your meals for today, or if there’s anything you’ve been needing.”

I count the money carefully, once she leaves. Count it again, just to be sure. It’s not enough to buy any kef, even if I knew where - which I could certainly find out if I wanted to, it’s easy enough, but I haven’t, so it doesn’t matter. It might have been on some planets - I wouldn’t have been somewhere like Nilt in the first place, except for the better prices a backwater economy like that could provide - but on a station, where security is tougher, the prices always go up to match. Still, there’s always some to be had. Even back in Radchaai space, with security far better than what they’ve got out here. As long as you know where to look.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s not enough, so it doesn’t matter.

I find the most civilized-looking - and most pompous - restaurant in the place, and order without looking at the prices. At least the money means I can get fish, which is always exorbitant on a station even within the Radch, and whatever they have for tea here. It’s not real tea, of course, but it’s at least a little less heavy than the Niltish stuff, and I get a second pot of it, as well. The fish is flavored with something sweet, which I hadn’t quite expected, but it’s perfectly good, especially after weeks of fruit. And the restaurant means people waiting on me for a change, which is as it ought to be, even if it’s started to seem a little strange by the time I’ve paid and left.

There’s only one long promenade down the length of the station. Everywhere else is housing, or I suppose offices and workspaces for the crew. I pace up and down the place again and again, worrying at the cuff of my shirt instead of a missing glove cuff, twirling my newly growing hair around a fingernail, fiddling with the corner of the wallet poking out of my pocket. Crushing it under my fingernail again and again. I think about heading back to the room, sigh, start another lap down the station.

Finally I stop at a store that sells cosmetics - it seems like it sells about half of the sundries you can buy on the station, probably not very impressive varieties of each. They don’t have anything like the kohl I used to put around my eyes - don’t even know if they’d still have it back in the Radch, these days, it hadn’t been my first concern when they’d spit me out of the pod - only some powders in garish colors and various mixers to make them more manageable. But it’s something like I used to have, at least - maybe not worth spending money on if I’d thought about it, but it’s something - and it uses the rest of the money in the wallet, except for a couple of coins that clink in my pocket on the way back to the room.

Breq hasn’t gotten back yet, which isn’t surprising, if she’d expected to be gone long enough for me to need to buy meals. I stow my purchases well away among my clothes - not that when I actually wear them it won’t become obvious, but suddenly I feel sheepish about going to the effort of purchasing them - let the button of my shirt collar open, go to put away Breq’s things. There’s even a tiny closet in the room with a few hangers, so I can let some of the wrinkles out of her long jackets, the ones I can’t manage to press out on a tiny shipboard ironing table. I can put on water for tea after that, and leave it to keep warm so it’ll be ready when she gets back.

Nestled in the bottom of her suitcase is the box where she keeps her money.

Which is fine, really; I’d thought she kept it with her, but I guess that would get annoying after a while, now that we’ve got safe places to stay. It’s flattering, actually, that she’d just leave it sitting here with me. Trusting me not to - do anything. Well, maybe she’d meant to put it away in the safe, and just had forgotten on her way out. Not that Breq forgets things like that.

I put the tablet she reads on by her bed, and her knee brace, in hopes that maybe she’d decide to wear it this time. The long coats I shake out carefully - I still keep worrying I’m going to ruin things, even when I’m just holding them, it doesn’t really take any more skill than just wearing the things does. And okay, maybe the box was there, and she’d taken the money out. That would make sense, no one wants to carry around a whole box if they don’t need to.

But no, it’s there, or at least some of it. Most of it. Not that I count - as soon as I see it sitting there I slam the box back shut - but I don’t really need to.

It goes in the drawer of the stand, next to her bed. Okay, and the tablet can go there too, on top of it, and the packet of toiletries. The icons, those go on top of the stand, and for some reason it always makes me so nervous to touch them that I almost forget why my hands are shaking. Almost.

You mostly just have to know who to ask to find kef, or any other drug, I’d imagine. Or what they might look like - the people who sell it want to be found, you get used to knowing the signs to look for, and approaching subtly enough you could deny it if she’s not taking you up. If I’d gone into the little restaurant near the end of the promenade, talked people up at the bar for a little while - watched what I’d said to whom, and maybe even let my hands shake a little at just the right moment - I could probably have had some by now.

Breq would be furious, of course. At the loss of the money, at least. Probably at the betrayal. I know too much, after all, she’d said as much back on Nilt, and I’d hardly listened because I’d thought - really thought - that I’d be better than this.

I don’t know if it’d change her thoughts about me, one way or the other, beyond that. I don’t know that there’s much to change.

The rest of her clothes go in the other drawers of the bedstand, folded in sharp little corners with all the care - and time - I can give them. And the suitcase in the corner, as unobtrusive as I can make it, and then I’m sitting on her bed again - not on my cot, on her bed - and the drawer is open by my feet and I’m wearing a groove in my thumb with the edge of the room’s key card.

I wouldn’t care, once I got it. I wouldn’t have to think about what she thought of me at all. I wouldn’t keep turning every minute to look at the door, to see if she’s coming in, to see if she’ll stop me in time.

I wouldn’t care if she smiled at me, either. I wouldn’t even care if she thought I was doing better. I wouldn’t have to keep trying to figure out what better was. And I’m so exhausted already.

Too exhausted to deal with having to think about this.

I kick the drawer shut, slam my key card down on the stand hard enough to hurt my hand. Stand outside the door for a long time, like I’m still waiting for her to get back, before I wander off into the station.

***

There’s no reason for there to really be night, in space. There’s not one, for the crews, where someone’s got to be on duty twenty-four hours a day; you just keep to the schedule of your duty cycle and sleep and eat when it’s your time to. But for stations, where there’s lots of people living and working there besides the direct station personnel, they always simulate one, and most everyone keeps to it who doesn’t have a need to do otherwise. It’s just what people like to do, I guess.

So it’s well into the night, by the time I get back to the room and knock on the door.

Breq answers right away, cracking it open just wide enough to see my face before she lets me in. And she doesn’t look like she’s been in bed yet, although she’s in a plain loose shirt instead of one of her jackets so it looks like she might have been thinking about it. She’s drinking a glass of water, too, which somehow makes me feel kind of sick inside. I’d never put on the water for tea, not that I would have been here to finish making it even if I had done.

She takes my key card from the nightstand, holds it out to me with a questioning glance, and I see her searching my eyes underneath the show of irony. Looking to see if I’ve come back drugged. I let her look, take the key card from her as soon as she drops her gaze. Hunch my shoulders, and try to look away.

“You left the money,” I say in answer to her unspoken question. I don’t need to say anything more.

“I wasn’t familiar with the place I was going,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone paying attention to what was on my person.”

And noticing the much more valuable item that was hidden underneath. Of course. But still…

“Better the risk you know than the risk you don’t know? Is that it?” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice, not completely.

She nods. “Something like that.”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” I say, wrapping my arms around myself, and my nails bite through my shirtsleeves into my skin.. “I’m not a good risk to take. You know that. You should have taken it with you.”

“We’re living in a confined space already,” she says reasonably. “And will be for several more months, if you don’t choose to leave on your own. I can’t be with you every moment. If you wanted to take it, you’d find a way.”

“No I wouldn’t! You’d break my arms and legs, you said as much!”

“I said I’d kill you, actually,” she says, lips pressing together, and my whole face feels hot like I’m going to cry or something. I can’t even manage to be embarrassed about it, it’s already too much for me to feel anything else, I just bite my lip and try to pretend she’s not looking at me. “But that’s if you betrayed my confidence. I’m not here to keep you from your own choices.”

“I know,” I say miserably, start to slink over to my cot. I stall halfway there, like just walking across the little room is too much effort when I’m doing it under her gaze and I can’t quite look up to see how disappointed it must be. Just run my hand over the smooth cool veneer of the walls, and even that’s too much to feel. I don’t want to feel anything at all.

I ought to be happy, that she trusted me enough to leave me with it. Or wanted to keep me around, somehow, even if she didn’t trust me, or whatever it was. I’m trying to be. But that would just make her wrong. I don’t want her to be wrong. If she’s wrong, I can’t imagine what I could possibly find that would be right.

“You didn’t take any,” she says. “I checked, when I found your key still here. And you haven’t had any kef, or you wouldn’t be fussing like this. Some people would call that a success.”

I wish I had done. I wish I had, until I let my eyes flick up to catch a glimpse of how she looks at me - like she’s not even disappointed at all, not even pitying. Just…matter of fact. Steady. I can’t imagine even the kef taking enough away from me that I wouldn’t care if I lost that. But she won’t always be looking at me - one day we’ll have reached Omaugh Station, and she won’t be looking at me at all. And then I don’t know who I’ll be able to be, if I can’t try and be the person she wishes I was.

I can’t explain something like that to her. Can’t really hide it, either. “It won’t always be,” I say. It feels vaguely treacherous to confess, though she obviously knows already. “It’s not enough just to want to stop. It’s so close. But it’s just not.”

She could have said she’d told me so. She doesn’t. “Then what would be enough?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know.” I curl my shoulders tight, squeeze close against the wall. “You said you wouldn’t help, so what’s the point even asking?”

“I said I wouldn’t be responsible for your quitting,” she says. “I’m not going to police your every move. I never said you couldn’t ask me for anything.”

“I don’t want to ask for things,” I say. “I’ll only ask for the wrong ones. I just want—” I don’t want to talk anymore, is what I want. I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to know.

She doesn’t say anything, just watches with cool blank eyes like a hunter waiting for her prey to move.

“I just want to go make the tea. Or something,” I say finally. “Something that I can manage. Something _proper_.”

She sighs, a little bit, as much like relief as like exasperation. “Then make the tea, Seivarden.”

I don’t have to think about how to do it at all anymore. Which is good, because I can hardly manage to think. The glass against my palms, my breath slowly starting to even in my chest; all of it’s too much, but not the way the feelings are. Instead they fade into the background, like they’re so, so much less important than the sense of my hands pouring water, arranging the bowls just so. It’s like the first breath of fresh air when you take off your vacuum suit; I hadn’t even realized how much I’d needed it until it was here.

I think Breq is still watching me. I don’t know, really; I don’t look up to check. Even waiting for the water to heat, my head is folded downwards, hands still against the little table, like any extra movement might break the calm that’s come over me. Like I’ve forgotten to be self-conscious at all, without even realizing it. It’s not that it doesn’t matter what she thinks about me. I know if I start thinking about it - if I let myself - I’ll just keep going until I feel like it’s driving me crazy again. I know I probably will, at some point, once this calm is past and every day is back to the same struggle again. But I don’t need to think about it, now.

She can watch, or not. It doesn’t need to change anything. Everything I need to do is right in front of me.

I check the temperature of the water before I add it to the leaves, wait some half a minute for it to cool. Measure the time against my heartbeats, slowing down enough, finally, that I can count them.

I extend the bowl to her in both hands, wait apprehensively for our fingers to brush. And they do, and for just a moment her hands trap mine against the bowl, just as warm and welcome as they’d been before. And then she’s drinking, and I’m standing with my head bowed, watching through my lashes as she settles barely perceptibly into her seat, and the feeling hasn’t gone away with the touch. It’s just growing as she finishes the bowl, relaxes more fully, and I don’t know how I’d ever needed anything else when I had this.

It’s not like the kef. I still want her - still wish she wanted me, at least. Still grow as hot at her touch as when I was a baby lieutenant watching my dashing senior officers at work. It’s just not important. Not unless it needs to be, and it doesn’t, now. So it’s not, and I hardly even think of it.

“I am glad you came back,” she murmurs, sets the bowl to rest momentarily on the arm of her chair.

I would have frozen, except that I’m already moving, automatically, to refill her bowl. But the feeling is the same. “Honored?”

She snorts. “I didn’t want to have to chase you down. It would have been a waste.” Her lips quirk in the bare bones of a smile. “Of a perfectly sufficient servant, at the very least.

I’m very, very aware how insulted I would have been at that, just a few weeks ago. Can almost feel the phantom of the bitter heat I’d’ve felt roiling through my stomach. Instead I feel it lower, and higher too, and my heartbeat would be racing again if I weren’t so perfectly, effortlessly calm. So I just duck my head, let myself return the smile.

“Next time we’re at a station I’ll find something for you to do. Or bring you with me, if it comes to that.” She covers her bowl when I go to refill it again. I put the pot back down, smooth my shirt in front of me, suddenly not sure what to do with my hands now they’re free. “Whether you accept or not is your own choice.”

“I will,” I say, stumbling over my own words. “You know I will.”

“It’s your choice,” she says again, a real smile finally settling onto her face.

And that’s enough, now. That’s more than enough, even if it’s just until we get back to the Radch. I’ll find what to do, once I get there. I’ll just keep moving forward. And wherever I end up I’ll be better for having had her believe in me, even just that much.

I can always, always choose her way.

I bow my head, turn to start washing the tea dishes, and from behind me I hear Breq crawl into bed, pull the covers up around her. It’s not until I turn off the water that I notice my breaths still coming in time with hers.

***

**Epilogue: Omaugh Station**

The gloves Breq had bought me are stiffer than the ones I had been used to, before, though not enough to really encumber me. She’d made me pick the color from the ones available, though at that point I’d have been just as happy to stand outside the shop and wait while she got whatever she saw fit. She probably knows more about what’s fashionable than I do, anyway, unless it’s a thousand years old.

I never want to take them off.

“It’s a perfectly proper assignment,” the Lord of the Radch says. This one’s a teenager, calm and beautiful even though her voice is still uneven. Not a braid out of place, or a jewel out of the hundreds that cover her chest and throat. “And you’ll be a captain again. Of a Mercy, yes, but you know well enough there are ways to move up, once you’re there.”

I nod, slowly. It’s become almost easy to keep my calm these days, even with everything that’s been going on - maybe because of it, really. The last thing Breq needs right now is for me to start making a fuss about every little thing. Things like talking to the Lord of the Radch, and refusing her orders outright.

“My lord, I beg your pardon, but I’ve given you my answer,” I say, easy as anything. “I go where Breq goes. You could always give her command of the ship, and I’ll serve on it, if she’ll have me.”

“She’s taught you how to be stubborn,” says Anaander Mianaai, almost amused. “Not something I’d expected to see in one of your ilk.” I’m almost tempted to ask what she means by that, but she goes on. “That’s what I’d planned to do, of course, in the event you refused. I trust I can count on you to help persuade her to take it.”

“I don’t think I really do any persuading her of anything, my lord,” I reply. “But I’ll do what I can.”

“Good,” she says, glancing away, like she doesn’t even notice my presence anymore. “Dismissed.”

“Citizen Seivarden,” says Station’s voice in my ear as I walk away. “Citizen Breq Mianaai is awake.”

“Really?” I say out loud, breaking into a grin. “Where is she?”

“She’s in Medical, on Deck Twelve.” Now that I’m paying attention to these kinds of things, I can hear the note of sarcasm, like Station had just held itself back from tacking an “ _obviously_ ” on the end. “I believe she’s still restricted to bed, but I’m sure the medics would appreciate any help getting her discharged as soon as possible.”

Well, if I help, it’s going to be helping make sure she stays as long as she needs to make sure she’s all right. Not that that’s going to be easy, with her. But still I take off for the elevator at half a run, feet hitting the tiled floor to a familiar rhythm in my head.

I find myself singing under my breath as I go along, a soft baritone with more enthusiasm than grace. The ending aria of the opera Breq had sung me, once, an exalting echo of the earlier lament.

“To come before you once again  
Unlooked-for grace, and still is here  
Our contract sealed, and I am bound,  
And ne’er held any lot so dear…”

I arrive at Medical to a cacophony of voices, mixing with the noises of the machines, and for a minute the anxiety that’s sat in the pit of my stomach for the past week roils up inside me once again. But then I catch sight of Breq, looking about as terrible as I’ve ever seen her, granted, and still surrounded by a gaggle of medics - but awake. Alive.

I pull my gloves taut around my hands, and set off to fetch some tea.


End file.
